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Mark C. Mattes, The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology

Anthony N. Lane, Ph.D.

06/01/2007

[1] Mark Mattes offers an assessment of the role of the doctrine
of justification in five contemporary Protestant theologians:
Eberhard Jüngel, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jürgen Moltmann,
Robert Jenson and Oswald Bayer. These theologians are not just
expounded and described but also rigourously assessed. By what
criterion? This is explained in the first chapter. Mattes shares
the radical Lutheran stance found in Gerhard Forde. The doctrine of
justification is the 'doctrine by which the church stands or falls'
and all systematic theological frameworks are subordinate to it. It
is both the basis of theology and its boundary. It applies not just
to 'first order' but also to 'second order' theological
discourse-i.e. to academic theology as well as to preaching (5-6).
Judged by this criterion, only one of the five theologians, Bayer,
passes muster.

[2] After the introductory chapter there are chapters on each of
the five theologians. The charge against most of them is not
denying the doctrine of justification but subordinating it to an
alien agenda. The first three are accused of accommodating the
doctrine to modern secular assumptions, interpreting it in terms of
'feeling', 'knowing' and 'doing', respectively.

The analogy between God and humanity, human
correspondence to God, viewed existentially by Jüngel and
theoretically by Pannenberg, is seen ethically by Moltmann. We
correspond to God primarily in action and secondarily in thought.
Either way, the pall of Barthianism hangs over these theologians.
When law is the form of the gospel, the gospel is lost. Faith is
subverted by sight. Driving these theologies is an apologetic. The
gospel itself will be justified to (Schleiermacher's) "culture
despisers" of religion when it delivers the new moral world. ... If
Jüngel's tendency is to liken the gospel to a meta-experience,
a "feeling," and Pannenberg's is to refine it into a grand, unified
theory, a "knowing," Moltmann's tendency is to translate the gospel
into a praxis, a "doing." (98)

[3] The other two theologians, by contrast, adopt
'non-accommodating strategies', but only one of them is deemed
satisfactory. Jenson is commended for seeing the church as a clear
alternative to the world and not seeking a foundation for Christian
faith shared by non-Christians. But, like the other three, he is
accused of Hegelianism, of a process view of God. Also, he
subordinates a forensic to an ontological view of justification,
following the Finnish school of Luther research.

[4] Oswald Bayer is presented as the theologian who takes
seriously the role of justification, to the extent that "it is
difficult, if not impossible, to separate the doctrine of
justification from Bayer's thinking at virtually any point in his
theology" (145). He locates truth not in experience (Jüngel),
knowledge (Pannenberg), action (Moltmann) or a Catholic community
(Jenson) but in a performative Word, a speech-act, in which the
promise of the gospel brings forgiveness, life and salvation. From
this perspective Bayer critiques the views of Kant, Schleiermacher
and Hegel and thus, implicitly, those of the other four theologians
considered in this book.

[5] The account of each theologian is masterful, although
demanding for those who are not used to the obscure language used
by many systematic theologians. Each chapter concludes with a
helpful summary which includes a list of positive and negative
features of the theology that has been expounded. The account and
critique of Moltmann, the theologian with whom I am most familiar,
is profound and insightful. Against the emphasis that Moltmann
(with many others) places on liberation, Mattes urges that politics
belongs to the order of creation, not salvation. "The most
important stance that the church can bring to the political realm
is the truth that the political realm is never ultimate" (111),
which undermines syncretistic theories of political salvation. One
of the least helpful effects of liberation theologies is that
political conflict is elevated to the status of Holy War.

[6] In the final chapter Mattes reaffirms his stance on the role
of justification as the discrimen of theology. Justification is the
criterion for theology as well as preaching and corrodes systems
like those built up by the four theologians who are criticized.

[7] The argument is competently presented and the expositions
and critiques of the theologians are perceptive. If, as one from
the Reformed rather than Lutheran wing of the Reformation, I am not
persuaded it is because I cannot accept the fundamental premise. On
what grounds is this particular doctrine, hardly the most prominent
in the New Testament, elevated to such an exclusive and elevated
status? Why should it be considered flattering to Bayer to state
that "it is difficult, if not possible, to separate the doctrine of
justification from Bayer's thinking at virtually any point in his
theology"? The radical stance underlying this book is one that
would not be accepted outside of Lutheranism and goes beyond the
position held historically by most Lutherans. It can justifiably
claim to be part of the historic Lutheran tradition, but it has
never been the whole of that tradition and has usually been a
minority.
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